Erinya could be called, but Erinya came with her own problems. If Zoe was in the ISI building, then Erinya was the last thing she needed. Zoe wouldn’t thank Sylvie for causing all her witchy powers to be burned away.
Sylvie backed into a parking slot, put the truck in park, and stared into the depths of garage and the discreet elevator. She didn’t see any surveillance cameras, but she didn’t doubt they were there. The ISI liked to watch.
She wondered, if things went wrong—if she disappeared into their holding cells instead of pulling Zoe out of them—if Alex would call up the video feed to be witness to it. Wondered how many agents were left. Riordan to give the orders. Four to pick up Zoe.
An uneasy squirm of unpleasant emotion crawled through her at that thought, made her jaw clench and her heart sink—unhappiness? betrayal? worry? Rather than dwell on it, she climbed out of her truck and went to face the music.
It sounded sooner than she’d expected. She rounded her truck’s scarred nose and found Dominick Riordan holding the elevator open for her, spotlighted in the otherwise-dimly-lit garage. A faint smile crossed his patrician face, showing a sliver of polished teeth. “Well, it’s about time. I was beginning to think we were going to have to send up flares.”
His voice was lovely, mellow and deep. It worked like nails on a chalkboard for Sylvie.
“I have an office, with office hours,” Sylvie said. “I know you know where it is. You gassed it, robbed it, and wrecked it just three months ago. If you wanted to talk, you knew where to find me.”
Riordan said, “Your office also has a guard dog of a particular ferociousness, and I’m down men already. Did you bring her with you?”
“Does it look like I brought anyone in with me? Do you see her sitting in my truck? Or launching herself at your throat?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. Which is odd to me, Shadows. Here you have this powerful attack dog, and you’re not using her.” He smiled again, a fuller thing that made his eyes bright with pleasure. Made him look like a nice guy. “Which makes me think you
“Or maybe I don’t need her for the likes of you. Seems to me your lot is folding all on your own. Mermaids, Riordan? Sand wraiths? Succubi? I don’t need to call on Erinya. You’re fucked.”
Riordan’s lips flattened, but he wasn’t goaded into temper. That was the problem with him, Sylvie thought. He was always so measured. So damn rational. Usually people shot off their mouths around her, goaded into it by her rudeness, by the desire to prove her wrong. Riordan just observed, calculated, then struck.
“Tone down your glee,” Riordan said. “You have hostages to fate here, or did you forget who brought you to my door?”
Sylvie swallowed back her retort, caught by the plural.
Riordan said, “Your sister’s actually been helpful, though I doubt that was her intention. She saw a certain agent in the halls and hailed him by a dead man’s name. Pled with him for help that he’s now in no position to give. Come along, Shadows. Let’s talk.”
He stepped back from the entry of the elevator, gestured her in. Sylvie saw no option but to follow his lead.
RIORDAN WASN’T ALONE IN THE ELEVATOR. AS SHE STEPPED IN, THE agent holding the door open released the button and turned his attention to her. “Hand over your weapon,” he said.
“Think you can make me?” Sylvie asked.
He took a step toward her, and she took that same step closer to Riordan, a quick two-step made awkward by the close confines of the elevator. Riordan pressed his code into the keypad, selected the top floor.
“Relax, Powell. Shadows can keep her weapon. She knows to be mindful of what she does with it.”
“I do?” Sylvie said, as the elevator glided into motion, ticking upward. Too much to hope for that Zoe would be at the top. More likely, she was in one of the holding cells, and Sylvie recalled the chill damp of them, thought they must be pressed up against the parking-garage wall. The elevator was taking her farther away.
Riordan said, “You’re much less impulsive than your reputation states. You control yourself well enough that your crimes have raised suspicion but nothing approximating proof. Shoot an ISI agent, and you’ll be in jail.”
“For as long as Erinya left me there. She doesn’t like me in distress. You should have seen her with the mermaids.”
“I am honestly sorry to have missed it,” Riordan said.
“Wait,” Sylvie said. “You know about the mermaids?”
“My son told me about them.”
“He remembers them?” Sylvie thought back. The other witnesses didn’t. But then, he’d fought off their song also. “That’s right. He’s a witch.”
“Of course he’s not,” Riordan said. Faint distaste drew his mouth down.
Before Sylvie could delve deeper, the elevator motor traded its whisper for a sudden whine and grind of machinery. The lights snapped off, plunging them into darkness.
Sylvie dodged Powell’s inevitable lunge, put her elbow into his ribs, put her gun to his throat, and pushed him back. He went.
“Shoot her, boss, don’t worry about me,” Powell said, voice strained.
Riordan sighed. “No one’s shooting anyone. Shadows, you doing this?”
“Trapped in an elevator doesn’t get me closer to Zoe.”
“Boss,” Powell said.
“Shut up, Powell. Listen. We have bigger problems than an unexpected stop.”
Through the muffling thickness of the elevator doors and shaft, Sylvie heard rapid cracks of gunfire and shouts made distant by architecture. A battle being fought.
“Shadows, let go of my man and let’s get this door opened.”
“How about instead of just plain out, we go up and out,” Sylvie said. “Just in case someone’s aiming those guns at the elevator door. Your doors might be bulletproof, I’m not.”
“My men are in trouble. I don’t want to waste time clambering up a shaft. We’re going through the doors,” Riordan said.
Even under stress, he sounded calm, in control. Sylvie envied him. She hadn’t felt in control for days. She released Powell. The big man shoved past her to help Riordan pry open the doors. Sylvie leaned against the back wall and tried to stay out of their way.
The air in the elevator, against the laws of probability, was cooling instead of growing stuffier with three people’s trapped breath and bodily exertion. She fumbled through her pockets, hunting for the tiny penlight she kept on her keychain. She pressed the button down, illuminating the small space before her. Something darkly vaporous jerked back from the light, streamed up into the elevator vent. It looked like smoke, but moved like ink in water, spreading and seeking.
“What was that?” Powell asked, jerking around in the shift of light and shadow. His eyes were wild. Riordan, Sylvie noticed, was unruffled.
“Your saboteur,” Sylvie said. “I don’t think it’s human. I think it’s come to finish the job the mermaids started.”
“Powell, the doors.” Riordan eyed Sylvie in the eerie greenish glow of the penlight, and said, “You ready?”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said.
“Don’t shoot my men. Shoot everything else,” Riordan said.
Powell and he made progress; the elevator doors grumbled but slid apart. “Go,” he told Sylvie.
Sylvie studied the gap. Definitely wide enough, split by two levels, leaving her with a choice—to enter the upper floor crawling, her gun hand hampered, or to drop an unknown distance into a darkness deep enough that her little penlight couldn’t begin to penetrate it. Neither idea appealed, but she chose to drop. Zoe, after all, was beneath them somewhere.
She passed Riordan the useless light.
